by Sax Rohmer
Trampling ripe grain under his feet. Tony ran to her. Tears were streaming down her face. Her eyes shone like blue jewels.
“Moon Flower! my Moon Flower!”
He swept her close. His cry of welcome was almost a sob. Her heart beat against him like a hammer as he began to kiss her. He kissed her until she lay breathless in his arms . . .
Chapter VIII
Dr. Fu Manchu moved a switch, and a spot of blue light disappeared from a small switchboard on the lacquered desk. He looked at General Huan, seated on a couch facing him across the room.
“Skobolov has reached Niu-fo-Tu,” he said softly; “so Mahmud reports. It is also suspected that the man Wu Chi Foh was seen there today. But this rumor is unconfirmed. It is possible—for we have no evidence to the contrary—that Wu Chi Foh has a rendezvous there with Skobolov, that, after all, Wu Chi Foh is a Communist agent.”
Huan Tsung-Chao shook his head slightly. “This I doubt, Master, but I admit it may be so. As Skobolov is closely covered, should they meet, Mahmud, who knows this man, will take suitable steps.”
The conversation was interrupted.
Uttering a shrill whistling sound, a tiny marmoset which had been hiding on a high ledge sprang like a miniature acrobat from there to Fu Manchu’s shoulder and began chattering angrily in his ear. The saturnine mask of that wonderful but evil face softened, melted into something almost human.
“Ah, Peko, my little friend! You are angry with me? Yet I have small sweet bananas flown all the way from Madeira for you. Is it a banana you want?”
Peko went on spitting and cursing in monkey language.
“Some nuts?”
Peko’s language was dreadful.
“You are teasing him,” General Huan smiled. “He is asking for his ration of my I850 vintage rose wine which, ever since he tasted it, he has never forgotten.”
Peko sprang from Fu Manchu’s shoulder on to the rug-covered floor, from there on to the shoulder of Huan. The old soldier raised his gnarled hand to caress Peko, a strange creature which he knew to be of incalculable age.
Dr. Fu Manchu stood up, crossed to a cabinet, and took out a stoppered jar of old porcelain. With the steady hand of a pharmacist, he poured a few drops into a saucer; restopped the jar. Peko rejoined him with a whistle not of anger, but of joy, grasped the saucer and drank deep.
Then, the uncanny little animal sprang on to the desk and began to toss manuscripts about in a joyous mood. Dr. Fu Manchu picked him up, gently, and put him on his shoulder.
“You are a toper, Peko. And I’m not sure that it is good for you. I am going to put you in your cage.”
Peko escaped and leapt at one bound on to the high ledge.
“Such is the discipline,” murmured Dr. Fu Manchu, “of one of my oldest servants. It was Peko to whom I first administered my elixir, the elixir to which he and I owe our presence amongst men today. Did you know this, my friend?”
“I did.”
Fu Manchu studied Huan Tsung-Chao under lowered eyelids.
“Yet you have never asked me for this boon.”
“I have never desired it. Master. Should you at any time observe some failure in my capacity to serve you, please tell me so. I belong to a long-lived family. My father married his sixth wife at the age of eighty.”
Dr. Fu Manchu took a pinch of snuff from a box on the desk. He began to speak, slowly, incisively.
“I have learned since my return to China that Dr. von Wehmer is the chief research scientist employed here by the Soviet. I know his work. Within his limitations, it is brilliant. But the fools who employ him will destroy the world—and all my plans—unless I can unmask and foil their schemes. Von Wehmer is the acknowledged authority on pneumonic plague. This is dangerously easy to disseminate. Its use could nearly depopulate the globe. For instance, I have a perfected preparation in my laboratory now, a mere milligram of which could end human life in Szechuan in a week.”
“This is not war,” General Huan said angrily. “It is mass assassination.”
Fu Manchu made a slight gesture with one long, sensitive hand. “It must never be. For several years I have had an impalpable powder which can be spread in many ways—by the winds, by individual deposits. A single shell charged with it and exploded over an area hundreds of miles in extent, would bring to the whole of its human inhabitants nearly instant death.”
“But you will never use it
“It would reduce the area to an uninhabitable desert. No living creature could exist there. What purpose would this serve? How could you. General, with all your military genius, occupy this territory?”
Huan Tsung-Chao spread his palms in a helpless gesture. “I have lived too long. Master. This is not a soldier’s world. Let them close all their military academies. The future belongs to chemists.”
Dr. Fu Manchu smiled his terrible smile.
“The experiments of those gropers who seek, not to improve man’s welfare, but to blot out the human race, are primitive, barbaric, childish. I have obtained complete control of one of the most powerful forces in the universe. Sound. With sound I can throw an impenetrable net over a whole city, or, if I wish, over only a part of it. No known form of aerial attack could penetrate this net. With sound I could blot out every human being in Peiping, Moscow, London, Paris or Washington, or in selected areas of those cities. For there are sounds inaudible to human ears which can destroy. I have learned to produce these lethal sounds.”
Old General Huan bowed his head. “I salute the world’s master mind. I know of this discovery. Its merit lies in the simple fact that such an attack would be confined to the target area and would not create a plague to spread general disaster.”
“Also,” Dr. Fu Manchu added, “it would enable your troops to occupy the area immediately. So that Othello’s occupation would not be gone . . .”
* * *
The sampan seemed like sanctuary when Tony and Yueh Hua reached it. But they knew that it wasn’t.
“We dare not stay here until sunset, Chi Foh. They are almost sure to search the canal.”
She lay beside him, her head nestled against his shoulder. He stroked her hair. Tony knew he had betrayed himself when he had called out in his mad happiness, “Moon Flower”—in English! But, if Yueh Hua had noticed, she had given no sign. Perhaps, in her excitement, she had not heard the revealing words.
“I know,” he said. “I expect they are looking for us now. But what can we do?”
“If we could reach Lung Chang we should be safe—” she spoke dreamily—”It is not far to Lung Chang.”
He nodded. Oddly enough, Nayland Smith’s instructions had been for him to abandon his boat and hurry overland to Lung Chang! He was to report there to a certain Lao Tse-Mung, a contact of Sir Denis’s and a man of influence.
“What I think we should do, Chi Foh, is to go on up this canal and away from the river. They are not likely to search in that direction. If we can find a place to hide until nightfall, then we could start for Lung Chang, which is only a few miles inland.”
Tony considered this program He laughed and kissed Yueh Hua. This new happiness, with fear of a dreadful death overhanging them, astonished him.
“What should I do without you, Yueh Hua?”
They started without delay. It was very hot, and Tony welcomed his large sun hat, gift of the lama. He worked hard, and Yueh Hua insisted upon taking her turn at the oar. There was no evidence of pursuit. The rich soil of this fertile plain, called “the Granary of Szechuan”, was now largely given over to the cultivation of opium poppies, offering a prospect of dazzling white acres where formerly crops of grain had flourished.
Nothing but friendly greetings were offered by workers in the fields. Evidently the hue and cry for an escaped prisoner had not reached this agricultural area. In the late afternoon Yueh Hua found a perfect spot to tie up; a little willow-shadowed creek.
There was evidence, though, that they were near a village, for through the trees they could see a r
oad along which workers were trudging homeward from the fields.
“It will do,” Tony agreed, “for we shall never be noticed here. But presently I’m going to explore a little way to try to find out just where we are.”
When they had moored the sampan they shared a scanty and dull meal, made more exciting by a seasoning of kisses, and Tony went ashore to take a look around.
He discovered that they lay not more than a few hundred yards from the village, which only a screen of bamboos concealed from them. It was an insignificant little group of dwellings, but it boasted an inn of sorts which spanned the road along which they had seen the peasants walking homeward. He returned and reported this to Yueh Hua.
“I think we should start for Lung Chang at once,” she advised. “The fields are deserted now, and soon dusk will come. I believe I can find the way if we go back a mile or so nearer to Niu-fo-Tu.”
Tony loved her more and more every hour they were together. Her keen intelligence made her a wonderful companion. Her beauty, which he had been so slow to recognize, had completely conquered him.
“Let’s wait a little while longer, Yueh Hua,” he said yearningly. “I want to tell you how much I love you.” He took her in his arms. “Kiss me while I try . . .”
* * *
He tried so hard that dusk was very near when Yueh Hua sighed, “My dear one, it is time we left here!”
Tony reluctantly agreed. They pushed the boat out again to the canal and swung around to head back toward Niu-fo-Tu. He was so happy in this newly found delight whose name was Moon Flower that the dangers ahead seemed trivial.
Tony had dipped the blade of the oar and was about to begin work when he hesitated, lifted the long sweep, and listened.
Someone was running down to the canal, forcing a way through undergrowth, and at the same time uttering what sounded like breathless sobs! It was a man, clearly enough, and a man in a state of blind panic.
“Chi Foh!” Yueh Hua spoke urgently. “Be quick! We must get away! Do you hear it?”
“Yes. I hear it. But I don’t understand.”
A gasping cry came. The man evidently had sighted the boat. “Save me! Help, boatman!”
Then, Tony heard him fall, heard his groans. He swung the boat into the bank. “Take the oar, Yueh Hua, while I see what’s wrong here.”
Yueh Hua grasped him. “Chi Foh! You are mad! It may be a trap. We know we are followed—”
Gently, he broke away. “My dearest—give me my gun—you—you know where it is. If this man is in distress I’m not going to desert him.”
From the locker Yueh Hua brought the automatic. She was trembling excitedly. Tony knew that it was for his safety, not for her own, that she trembled. He kissed her, took the pistol, and jumped ashore.
Groans, muffled hysterical words, led him to the spot. He found a semi-dressed figure writhing in a tangle of weeds two to three feet high, a short, thickset man of Slavonic type, and although not lacking in Mongolian characteristics, definitely not Chinese. He was clutching a bulging briefcase. He looked up.
“A hundred dollars to take me to Huang Ko-Shu!” he groaned. “Be quick!”
Tony dragged the man to his feet. He discovered that his hands were feverishly hot. “Come on board. I can take you part of the way.”
He half carried the sufferer, still clutching his leather case, on to the sampan.
“Chi Foh, you are mad!” was Yueh Hua’s greeting. “What are we to do with him?”
“Put him ashore somewhere near Niu-fo-Tu. He’s very ill.”
He dragged the unwanted passenger under the mat roof and took to the oar.
But, again, he hesitated—although only for a moment.
There were cries, running footsteps, swiftly approaching from the direction of the hidden village . . .
Chapter IX
Tony drove the sampan at racing speed. He could only hope that they had been out of sight before the party evidently in pursuit of their passenger had reached the canal.
The banks were deserted. Moonlight transformed poppy fields into seas of silver. When, drawing near to Niu-fo-Tu, grain succeeded poppy, the prospect became even more fairy-like. It was a phantom journey, never to be forgotten, through phantom landscapes. Willows bordering the canal were white ghosts on one bank, black ghosts on the other.
Yueh Hua crouched beside him. The man they had rescued had apparently gone mad. He struck out right and left in his delirium, slapping his face and hands as if tormented by a swarm of mosquitoes.
“Chi Foh,” Yueh Hua whispered, “he is very ill. Could it be—” she hesitated—”that he has the plague? “
“No, no! don’t think such things. He shows no signs of having the plague. Take the oar for a few minutes, my dearest. He must want water.”
“Oh, Chi Foh!”
But Tony clasped her reassuringly and ducked in under the low roof. He was far from confident, himself, about what ailed the mystery passenger, but common humanity demanded that he should do his best for him.
The man sipped water eagerly; he was forever trying to drive away imaginary flying things which persecuted him. His head rested on his bulky briefcase. His hectic mutterings were in a language which Tony didn’t know. To questions in Chinese he made no reply. Once only he muttered, “Huang-ko-Shu.”
Tony returned to Yueh Hua. “Tell me, where is Huang-ko-Shu?”
“It is on the Yangtse River—many miles below Niu-fo-Tu.”
“I told him I would take him part of the way,” Tony murmured. “We must put him ashore this side of Niu-fo-Tu.”
“I wish we had never found him,” Yueh Hua whispered, giving up the oar to Tony . . .
They retraced the route by which they had come. Tony insisted on doing most of the rowing, and was getting near to exhaustion.
The countryside showed deserted.
“Let me take the oar,” Yueh Hua said gently, but insistently. “There is not far to go now and I can manage it easily. You must, Chi Foh.”
He gave in. He watched Yueh Hua at the long sweep, swinging easily to its movement with the lithe grace of a ballerina. What a girl!
Tony found it hard to keep awake. The man they had rescued had stopped raving; become quite silent. The gentle movement of the boat, the rhythmic swish of the long oar, did their hypnotic work. He fell asleep . . .
“Chi Foh!” Yueh Hua’s voice. “Wake up. I am afraid!”
Tony was wide-awake before she ceased speaking. He drew her down to him. She was trembling. “Where are we? What’s happened?”
He looked around in the darkness. The boat was tied up in a silent backwater. Through the motionless leaves of an overhanging tree which looked like a tree carved in ebony, he could see the stars.
“We are just above the place where we tied up before, Chi Foh. You remember the footbridge over the canal? There’s a path from the bridge which leads to a main road—the road to Lung Chang.” Yueh Hua caught her breath. “But . . . the man is dead!”
Tony got to his feet. He had a flashlamp in the locker; groped his way to it, found it, and shone its light on to the man who lay there.
Beyond doubt, Yueh Hua was right. Their passenger was dead. Yueh Hua knew that Tony had an automatic pistol, but he had hidden the flashlamp. He wondered if she would say something about it, tried to think of an explanation. But she said nothing.
Tony searched the man’s scanty clothing, but found no clue to his identity. In a body belt, which he unfastened, there was a considerable sum of money, but nothing else. The big portfolio was locked, and there was no key. So far he had gone when Yueh Hua called out:
“Throw him overboard, Chi Foh! He may have died of plague!”
But Tony, who had a smattering of medical knowledge, knew that he had not died of plague. Of what he had died he didn’t know, but he did know that it wasn’t of plague.
“Don’t worry, Yueh Hua. I told you before, there’s no question of plague. I must try to find out who he was.”
He wen
t to work on the lock of the briefcase and ultimately succeeded in breaking it. He found it stuffed with correspondence in Russian, a language of which he knew nothing, much of it from the Kremlin and some from the Peiping Embassy; this fact clearly indicated by the embossed headings of the stationery. The man was a Soviet agent!
There was also a bound book containing a number of manuscript pages in Chinese, which, although he knew written Chinese, Tony was unable to decipher.
He put the book and the correspondence back in the broken briefcase and dropped the briefcase in the locker.
His walkie-talkie was there, too, carefully wrapped up. This was an occasion on which he desperately wanted to ask for Nayland Smith’s advice. If only he dared to take Yueh Hua into his confidence! He no longer doubted her loyalty. She had given him her love. But she was Chinese, and he hated the thought of breaking this idyll by confessing that he was an impostor, an American posing as one of her countrymen.
It was an impasse. He must rely upon his own common sense.
The body of the dead Russian must be disposed of. This was clear enough. When it was found (and eventually it would be found), the evidence must suggest that he had fallen into the hands of thieves who had taken whatever he had had in his possession. Therefore—the money belt must not be found on him.
Having come to these conclusions. Tony switched off the flash-lamp and rejoined Yueh Hua, who was watching him, wide-eyed.
“Is it a straight road to Lung Chang?”
“There are no straight roads in China.”
He forced a laugh, and kissed her. “All the better for us. Somewhere nearby, I am going to throw the dead man overboard.”
“That is right,” Yueh Hua agreed. “We need not carry much.
When we get to Lung Chang, my aunt will take care of us. But”—she drew back—”you will lose your boat!”
Tony was baffled. “I must take a chance. I have some money left. . . or I might steal another sampan, as you meant to steal mine!”
He pushed the boat out of the little backwater and on to the canal. Yueh Hua, he knew, was unusually highly strung. She watched him in a queer way he didn’t like. Just by the bridge he stopped rowing.